Abstract
This chapter offers an anthropological analysis of the intimate relationships between the desire for action, mission formations and military violence. In their anthropology of traps, Alberto Corsín Jimenez and Chloe Nahum-Claudel describe the notion of the trap as “trap/entrapment”, that is, as a notion with a duplex identity as a noun and as a verb. As a noun, traps refer to material designs with lethal potentials. The coalition force had been formed two months earlier, in December 2001, following 9/11 and the subsequent US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October the same year. The British-led Task Force Helmand was stood up in April 2006 and was, until August 2013, headquartered in Lashkar Gah, Helmand’s provincial capital. Originally, the multinational task force, roughly of brigade size, was charged with a counterinsurgent (COIN) mission. In total, the Loki-led tank detachment was deployed to 16 operations, amounting to 68 days and nights away from Camp Bastion.